I am a big fan of the short story. As a matter of fact, I’ve written a few. Perhaps my love for the short story began when I was a little boy, my mother used to read to me at night. The book was “Little Visits With God” by Allen Hart Jahsmann and Martin R. Simon. Little Visits With God was published in 1957 and in short story form took a Leave It To Beaver approach to teaching young children how to handle different situations in a moral and Christian way. I’m sure my mother’s hope was that reading this book to me every evening would ensure that I would grow up to be a nice young man. I still have this book.

“Terror Train” is not “Little Visits with God”. I love the horror genre. The more terrifying, sordid and disturbing the better. This anthology is packed with horror stories and poems from over 30 authors. And yes, they all take place around trains. The eeriness of the book begins with a poem by Roger Cowin, and then eases into a great story by award winning author, Charie D. La Marr, which reminds me of a Twilight Zone gone wrong. Other authors include William F. Nolan an Edgar Allen Poe Award winner and author of Logan’s Run among other titles.

With collaboration such as this, there are many different styles of writing for you to appreciate or perhaps not appreciate. One such title “Steele Deliverance” by Michael Thomas-Knight starts out setting the scene for the story and it seems as if he had his thesaurus out writing adjective after adjective. Once the dialogue kicked in, I was absorbed into the story but it took awhile to get absorbed.

This book was an enjoyable read. Some times we need little visits of horror. I suggest that you purchase it and set it right next to your night table. If you have trouble sleeping, pick it up and read a story or two… as long as you can sleep with the light on.